Mark 1:1-8
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
A Panda walks into a bar. He eats shoots and leaves. Now, did that Panda just eat a meal of bamboo shoots and leaves, OR did that Panda, eat his dinner, pull out a gun and blast his way out of there to avoid paying the bill? How about this one… is it, "A voice cries out! 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.'” Or is it, “A voice cries out in the wilderness: ‘prepare the way of the Lord’.” Are we being told to start a highway construction project out in the wilderness OR are we being told to listen to the guy who lives out in the wilderness? How about this one... Let’s eat, Grandma! Is this ol’ cousin Ralphie just inviting grandma to the table for the family meal... OR, has ol’ cousin Ralphie, started channeling Hannibel the Cannibal and wants to serve roasted grandma for dinner with a nice chianti?!
How can we know which way it is? Punctuation? Sure, if you’re reading it in English, but there’s no Oxford comma in Biblical Hebrew or Greek. Fortunately our brains are wired to make the calculation for us based on our past experiences. Since ol’ cousin Ralphie’s never shown any cannibalistic tendencies before, Grandma’s likely to be just fine.
Figuring out the world we encounter each day based on our past experiences is part of how we were created. Those experiences taught our ancestors not to pet the Saber Toothed Kitties and that tar pits where terrible swimming holes. This way of sorting out the world around us works really, really, really well most of the time... right up to the point… where it doesn’t. Because, while most of the time it does work, sometimes our past experiences blind us to what’s really going on in the present. All those past experiences with cousin Ralphie have taught us he’s not a cannibal. BUT the day he shows up at dinner screaming, “LET’S EAT GRANDMA!” while revving up his chainsaw? That’s probably NOT the day to ONLY trust our past experiences with cousin Ralphie!
Sometimes, we encounter times when we need to let go of what we have been TAUGHT in the past and instead really LISTEN and SEE what is in front of us in the now. That’s exactly the case with the first lesson and the Gospel today. When Isaiah first spoke those words it was with the voice of HOPE... it was the voice of promise, forgiveness and life! It was a voice telling the people they would soon be walking a highway across the wilderness back to home! But, when those VERY SAME WORDS came flying out of John the Baptist’s mouth, they carried a VERY different message. John didn’t have a message of hope. It was a warning! The LORD is coming and the people’s crooked ways needed some serious straightening out! BOTH were voices crying out. BOTH had something important to tell the people from God. BOTH used the VERY SAME words. But unless the people REALLY LISTENED they would miss what they really needed to hear.
The fact that these same words take on different meanings doesn’t make Isaiah “right” and John the Baptist “wrong” or vice versa. What it does though, is to teach us the importance of REALLY listening, and not just assuming that our past experiences are always all we ever need, forever and ever amen. Assuming (in addition to that thing that assuming does) can lead us to a trap that much of our country has fallen into head first. A trap that says, for ME to be “right” YOU have to be “wrong.” My experience of life is how “real” life goes. If you say your experience of life is different than mine, then you must be lying and your experience is just fake news. When we fall into that trap, when we fail to really LISTEN to those around us… fail to listen to the ones crying out in the wilderness of their lives, we deny them the dignity with which God created them.
Failing to listen to our neighbors cry in the wilderness is bad enough, but failing to listen also puts us in danger of missing what God is trying to tell us, through them. How often do we dismiss the voice of those crying out of their wilderness, simply because it’s not a wilderness we’ve personally experienced in our own lives?
My experience of life, for example, does not include the wilderness of injustice that is poured relentlessly on those with brown or black skin. But when black lives cry out in the wilderness of a life experience I know nothing of, does that make their life experience untrue or invalid? NO! If a black life cries out in the wilderness, telling me where he experiences rough places in their life, then it is my calling as a Christian to LISTEN. At the very least I’m called to honor the dignity of that life by listening. But their cry in the wilderness MAY ALSO be a call from God to do what I can to make rough places a plain.
Really listening to the life experiences of someone from a different world is hard. Really listening means understanding that their experience and ours can be as different as Isaiah’s and John’s, but that each experience, like Isaiah’s and John’s, is fully true, AND, at the very same time, vastly different.
This Advent we were advised last week to take time to practice noticing the small things, so our noticing muscles are limber enough to notice the big things when they come. This Advent we’ve been advised to DO the work of Jesus, even while Jesus feels very far away, because the work itself can give us hope in our waiting. To those sound bits of advice from Jesus, today’s lessons ask us to add the Spiritual practice of really listening to our neighbors, and just maybe within their crying wilderness voice we might also hear the voice of God. Amen.
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